Figure 1 - Cigarette Advertisement
 

The Concepts of Artificiality and Authenticity
in Architecture
Olaf Pfeifer   ARCH 610 Thesis Research    May 20, 1999

Content
 

I. Project Outline *

I. Project Outline

Idea and Impulse

The Idea of Architecture as a language implies the idea to observe its grammar and vocabulary in order to enhance the virtue of communication. Architectural expression becomes possible through sensational experience. Among the basic parameters of such experience, we find dialectically opposed pairs like narrow/wide, public/private, dark/light, static/ephemera, cold/warm, and many more. These opponents do not necessarily have to be antonyms, some dialectic interference is fairly enough to span an array of expressions between such poles. Also, intuitive perception is not restricted to the most simple parameters (like hot/cold), but also takes place for quite complex and abstract experiences like, for example, ‘pathetic’ or ‘dynamic’ expression.

Part of the unwritten conventions for the communication and expression of a specific age, which we call the ‘Zeitgeist’, is the changing emphasis on some of the basic patterns discussed above. To me, it seems that our age, due to an extensive control of its environment, we ask for the sensation of the authentic, the uncontrolled, but also the controlled, the artificial. At the same time the traditional positions of ‘natural’ being authentic and ‘artificial’ being awkward feign have definitely blurred. No one who designs any kind of environment can do this any longer without a conception of the image he produces and its authenticity.

Goals and Methodology

The Aim is to develop some kind of concept, sensibility and proficiency for the use of authentic and artificial Elements in Architecture. The methods will be theoretical (analysis) and practical (design), inductive (empiric case studies) as well as deductive (discussion of positions in theory). If architectural design is considered to be the experimental part of such work, it will be necessary to define the constraints as careful as possible. Program and site for a design dealing with issues of artificiality and authenticity still have to be developed, as well as the design method itself.

This will, along with a further intrusion into the theoretic background, be a major objective of independent studies, which will precede the thesis term.
 
 

Figure 2 - The Subversive Authentic

II. The Concepts of Artificiality and Authenticity in Art and Architecture

Definition

The idea to write about the concepts or artificiality and authenticity in architecture faces some definition difficulties. First, one has to say which definition of the Authentic is being referred to, for the concept has changed over time, and also there are different ideas, depending on weather you look at authenticity from a moral or a phenomenological point of view.
 
 

To keep the definition stuff short, I’d like to base upon WEBSTER’S Dictionary, where ‘authentic’ is defined first at ‘being actually and exactly what is claimed’. The second definition rather refers to the moral aspects: "‘authentic’ implies being fully trustworthy as according with fact". These moral issues are also what Lionel TRILLING in his book "Sincerity and Authenticity" (1971) aims at, because he as a literature theorist is interested in authenticity of human beings rather than objects. Thus he defines Sincerity as "the degree of congruence between feeling and avowal" (p.5) and authenticity as the state where a person is completely identical with its feeling, which is exceptional and considered valuable.
 
 

He also quotes Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) (p.5):

However, an authentic person is, to say it briefly, one who simply (sic!) is itself. (comp. p. 11, 93)
 
 

Artificiality, in its synonyms as ‘insincerity’ or ‘pretension’, seems to be the very opposite of authenticity. A simple check of Microsoft’s thesaurus offers all its synonyms and connotations related to one word: "false", whereas the immediate meaning of ‘authentic’ in the sense of ‘genuine’ is "true". (The item of authenticity seems essentially to be a question of moral.) This definition causes a problem because all art is by definition man-made and artificial, and therefore couldn’t be authentic. Luckily, this is wrong, because the true antonymous of ‘artificial’ is ‘natural’, and whereas most natural objects are considered to be genuine, an authentic thing doesn’t necessarily belong to nature. Once we accept this, amazing things like authentic artificiality become possible.¹

However, the relation between artificiality and authenticity seems to be dialectic, just as the relation between human emancipation and alienation from Nature.²
 

Role of the Artist

According to TRILLING, the idea of the sincerity of literary persons began to decline with the invention of the "artist as a poet, not as man speaking to men".³  As soon as the author is not wholly identical with the message of his work, a rift between the sincerity of the author and the authenticity of its product arises, which finally leads to the autonomous authenticity of the artwork and complete alienation of author and the public.

 

The Public’s Need for Authenticity

"That the word [authenticity] has become part of the moral slang of our day points to […] our anxiety over the credibility of existence and of individual existences", says TRILLING (p. 93). "From Rousseau we learned that what destroys our authenticity is society – our sentiment of being⁴ depends upon the opinion of other people."

"Nowadays our sense of what authenticity means involves a degree of concreteness or of extremity. […] Authenticity is implicitly a polemical concept, fulfilling its nature by dealing aggressively with received and habitual opinion, aesthetic opinion in the first instance, social and political opinion in the next. One topic of its polemic […] is the error of the view that beauty is the highest quality to which art may aspire." (p. 94)

The Sublime

Trilling compares the authentic to the sublime as far as both have a "settled antagonism to beauty" in common. He cites Burkes ‘Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’, who connects the sublime with masculinity because of its capacity for arousing the emotion of terror, "which calls forth in us the power to meet and master it; the experience of terror stimulates an energy of aggression and dominance. Beauty, on the contrary, is to be associated with femininity. It seduces men to inglorious indolence and ignoble hedonism." It is "that quality of an object which excites love […] by relaxing the whole system." (p. 95) On goes Trilling (p. 97): "The sublime does not please; but it does give pleasure: It produces, Burke says, ‘a sort of swelling and triumph that is extremely grateful to the human mind.’" Thus the rise of the esteem of authenticity in the 20^th Century: "Now that art is no longer required to please, it is expected to provide the spiritual substance of life. […] What the audience demands of the artist […] is the sentiment of being. […] The sentiment of being is the sentiment of being strong. […] that the person be an integer, impenetrable, perdurable and autonomous in being if not in action. […] The sentiment of being strong is increasingly subsumed under the conception of personal authenticity. The work of art is itself is authentic by reason of its entire self-definition: it is understood to exist wholly by the laws of its own being, which include the right to embody painful, ignoble, or socially inacceptable subject-matters. Similarly the artist seeks his personal authenticity in his entire autonomousness – his goal is to be as self-defining as the art-object he creates. As for the audience, its expectation is that through its communication with the work of art, which may be resistant, unpleasant, even hostile, it acquires the authenticity of which the object itself is the model and the artist the personal example. (p. 99f)

 
 

The Heroic as opposed to Sincerity

TRILLING also introduces the concept of the heroic as opposed to sincerity. "In the ancient literary conception of the hero [a man who is favored by the gods], […] the hero is one who looks like a hero: the hero is an actor – he acts out his own high sense of himself." (p. 85)

"The whole import of [the antique] tragedy depends upon the ‘elevation’ of the hero." (p. 87)

"A role played is substituted for a real function performed. […] What actually matters is to play well rather than badly, with no genuine relevance to the outcome. The actors, bravely playing, are their own audience" (citing Hans Jonas, p. 86)

" There can be no comic hero, for comedy shows men as worse they really are." (p. 87)

"By its nature, pedagogy is at odds with the heroic genre of tragedy. (p. 83) Story-telling is oriented towards ‘practical interests’, it seeks to be useful, it ‘has counsel’ to give; the end it has in view is ‘wisdom’."

Figure 3 - Authenticity by Imperfection

III. What does Artificiality and Authenticity mean towards Architecture?

One approach to explore the outcome of the concepts of Artificiality and Authenticity towards architecture and architectural concepts means to work empiric rather than deductive by analyzing specified projects, positions or architects’ oeuvres.

Case Studies – Analyzed Projects, Positions and Oeuvres

‘Critical Regionalism’ and the Authentic (Kenneth Frampton)

The term ‘Critical Regionalism’ was originally introduced by Kenneth Frampton in the late seventies to denote a specific stream within the late modernist (or early post-modernist) architecture. Frampton doesn’t really give a definition for the term, he merely describes some specific attributes which he finds to unite this group of architects he labels the critical regionalists. His Examples include Joern Utzon, the Catalan Nationalists (MBM, Coderch, Bofill...), Alvaro Siza, Raimund Abraham, Luis Barragan, Richard Neutra, Vittorio Gregotti, Carlo Scarpa, the Ticinese Architects (Mario Botta, ...), Tadao Ando and many more.

According to Frampton, Critical Regionalism typically ...

• is critical of modernization
• tends toward the paradoxical creation of a regionally based ‘world culture’
• refuses to abandon the emancipatory and progressive aspects of modern architecture
• tends to flourish in those cultural interstices which in one way or another are able to escape the optimizing thrust of universal civilization.
• favors the small rather than the big plan
• places the stress on the territory to be established by the structure erected on the site
• stresses site-specific factors, such as topography, local light, climatic conditions.
• emphasizes the tactile as much as the visual: varying levels of illumination, heat, cold, humidity and air movement, varying aromas and sounds given off by different materials in different volumes.
• is opposed to the tendency in an age dominated by media to the replacement of experience by information
• is opposed to the sentimental simulation of local vernacular
• inserts reinterpreted vernacular elements, occasionally even derived from foreign sources

Frampton (1980, p. 315) proposes that regionalist architecture should aim for cultural authenticity (identity): "Regional or national cultures must today, more than ever, be ultimately constituted as locally inflected manifestations of ‘world culture’. [… ] Sustaining any kind of authentic culture in the future will depend ultimately of our capacity to generate vital forms of regional culture while appropriating alien influences at the level of both culture and civilization."

To me, this proposed authenticity of a culture is kind of a meta- or macro-layer of the topics I’d like to address further on. Even if authenticity of a culture does not necessarily mean that each of its parts needs to be authentic itself (however defined), the Idea of the authentic regional culture seems to be strengthened if it consists of a certain amount of regional-authentic elements.

 
 

Organic Architecture and Authenticity

Guenther Behnisch: Democracy and Authenticity / Anti-Monumentalism

  Figure 4 - Guenther Behnisch & Partner, Olympic Stadium Munich (1972), and Kindergarten
 

The Works of Guenther Behnisch show a remarkable plurality of formal languages. In common is a certain anti-monumental approach, which is typical for the German post-world-war II generation. The experience of the abuse of heroic architecture, national and centralist structures for fascist political aims led to widespread ideas of a non-centralist social and political culture, which saw no need to represent itself with monumental buildings. Furthermore, political ideas like small local groups interacting with each other, non-oppressive local authorities serving the citizens, experimental approach to the newborn democracy, transparency of political structures and processes were directly translated into architectural qualities like small scaled clusters, lightweight and improvised building material, playfully structured and designed buildings and transparency as a main leading motive. Most of these buildings did never want to represent anything else than they were, and thus they can be considered to be authentic, and non-heroic, too.

John Ruskin, (1819-1900): Romantic Ideas of Sincerity, Pan-Naturalism and Authenticity

John Ruskin’s ideas about an Architecture of Gothic Revival are most of all to be described as romantic, as being typical for the romantic age. (idealized picture of a certain past to which the own origins are related (see RUSKIN, p. 174), religiousness, etc.) That does already imply the connection to nature, but his Ideas go even beyond the simple naturalism as he develops certain moral elements of a gothic architecture. These are, as he states, even more important to the question of a true gothic architecture than the formal outcome of the architecture itself. This Idea of inherent moral elements, which quasi-automatically generate the form, is typical for the organic approach, as we will find it later with the functionalists like Haering and Scharoun, or even Greg Lynn. At the same time, exactly this definition of six points (p. 171 f) to recognize ‘real’, which means authentic, gothic architecture, makes clear that Ruskin searches, like all true romantics, for the authentic. Five of the six points, savageness, changefulness, naturalism, grotesqueness, and rigidity do perfectly fit into Trillings above mentioned definition of authenticity being a rude and polemical concept, which has a "settled antagonism to beauty". The sixth one, redundance, is a concept which is inherent to biological evolution, and is therefore another reference to Ruskins pan-naturalism.

 
 

Hugo Haering (1882-1958): Super-Functionalism: ‘Wesensform’ and the Authentic
 

The well-documented5  Ideas of Hugo Haering can be described best as a type of super-functionalistic attitude. Haering, in whom many see the father of the modern (European) organic architecture, developed the theory of the "New " ("Neues Bauen"), which he carefully distinguished from the ‘architecture moderne’ of Le Corbusier. (p. 8) He himself described (p. 8) the difference as resulting out of the different cultural heritage of the Germanic-Nordic and the Mediterranean-Roman civilization, and puts itself by this way in tradition to the Gothic Revivalist Ruskin. He was also influenced by Sullivan and shares a lot of ideology with Frank Lloyd Wright, like whom he was a teacher and demanded a new, transcendental way of thought, which he called ‘logocentric’ (p.  9) Different from Corbusier’s Intention to let architecture become the "play of [geometric] volumes under the light", Haering proposed development of form as "Leistungsform" (performance form), which implies functionalist manners of deriving form out of function, and, if that doesn’t lead to a distinctive form, as "Wesensform" (character form), related to some kind of genetic nature which is inherent to every objective. The house becomes an organ of its inhabitants. The architect’s role is defined as the medium, through whose talents this inherent character comes to light. BEHNE (p. 128) comments this 1926 as follows: "The functionalist tends to depersonalize the building process. He is reluctant to adopt an imperatorial attitude toward the world. He integrates himself and his product. The person who builds is ultimately only the mediator. For him [in this case Finsterlin, not Haering!] the perfect building would be one that grew out of the ground like an organic plant." Haering indeed has always refused the use of nature-like forms; many of his designs do not even contain bent or curved shapes. Haerings strive for a form which evolutes out of the inner necessities of the object being shaped clearly represents a longing for authenticity of the object – not as an product of art, but as a being. He is at the same time clearly not a naturalist.	Figure 5 - Hugo Haering - Housing Design during war years
Hans Scharoun, (1893-1972) – Character through Artificial Complexity Scharoun is often seen as a disciple, executer, and developer of Haering’s Ideas, because there are only few theoretical writings by Scharoun, but a lot of built work. In fact, he might, as Peter Blundell-Jones suggests, even have developed them simultaneously. One major theme of all his Architecture was the treatment of the interior and exterior common space in an organic way, where shape results out of the function of leading human movement, view, and mood. His theme was regardless of the building type always a common ‘space of the center’, the ideal middle. Unlike Haerings, Scharouns buildings became symbols, sometimes even monumental (in their sculptural shape, but never in spaces) of his orientation towards society, community, and democracy, ideals, which also can be found in his visionary watercolor paintings during the war years. His influence in propagating the ideals of the ‘brightened, green City’6  in German postwar-city-planning and also of his formal design language was huge. His work contains both artificial and authentic, but never naturalistic7  elements. In the late twenties, his buildings received the surfaces of the abstract white cubes of the ‘International Style’, although they were never abstract cubes. Later, Scharoun used more tactile surfaces and preferred broken, ambivalent and multiple colors, materials, lights and spaces. It is an architecture of complexity rather than simplicity or minimalism, and there is always a dense and carefully spun net of spatial and visual relations to the site. His buildings try an authenticity without simplicity, but they bear a clear will to have a given (=artificial) Shape (‘Gestaltwillen’). They, and moreover the underlying ideology of community have a heroic component, but it’s the broken heroism of a whale or an elephant8.	Figure 6 - Hans Scharoun, Project for  a School

 
 
 
 
 
 

NOX Architecture and Kas Osterhuis: H20 Pavilion, Rotterdam – space of experience
This single project is a very recent example of organic building. The organic notion does not only derive from the outer shape of the building alone, which resembles some kind of technoid worm, but also from its program. The interior of the object offers an exhibition space that informs its visitors about sensual and measurable properties of the water and its realm. It provides tactile experiences (damp, temperature, wind, fog, steam, rain, …) as well as acoustic or visual (projections), and, not last, spatial. All this qualities are fully artificial and do not try to simulate the overall experience of a natural environment, whereas each single stimulus can also be experienced in a natural environment. Also, one could state that this might be an authentic space, since it provides a synthetic experience, but one that does not as a whole resemble any existing situation. The whole H2O Pavilion Experience can only be found at this certain place, which generates something like an authenticity of the artificial.
	Figure 7 - NOX Architects and Kas Osterhuis, H2O Pavillion: Interior view and Plan of Sweetwater Pavilion, Plan and Section of Saltwater Pavilion
MVRDV: Project for the Netherlands EXPO 2000 Pavilion – caricaturing Regionalism	Figure 8 - MVRDV, Elevation and Images for Dutch Expo 2000 Pavilion
This recent Project of MVRDV plays in a provoking way with the idea of exhibiting an image of a country like the Netherlands, where basically every part of the landscape is part of a cultural (re-)production. The pavilion’s Idea is to stack a theme park of artificial landscapes, with themes like agriculture, rain, sea, forest etc. and to make it a working hybrid, partly autonomous microcosms. It is – of course – totally artificial, and the proposal does not look as if they are planning to make any particular part become natural, but it will, as the H2O Pavilion, provide a unique experience through the creation of a spatial significant and singular object composed out of artificial pieces. Ironically, this project fulfills some of Frampton’s criteria for Critical Regionalism – in some way it is the caricature, or diagram, of regionalism.

 
 

Figure 9 - Francois et Lewis, Project for a Conference Space

François et Lewis: Conference Space in the garden,
University in Aix-en-Provence, 1994 – Minimalist Juxtapositions

The Pavilion stands as artificial object in a garden with high pampas grass. It virtually consists merely out of a flat horizontal slab, which is supported by thin, rusty, metal reinforcement wires that push through it, resembling an artificial version of the pampas grass. The only other visible element is a moveable screen that divides the space. It carries photographic images of trees and mirrors real ones.

As well as the two preceding ones, this project plays with different grades of authenticity and artificiality. It confronts images of nature with a real (if not authentic) garden, and it confronts the pure naturalness of the grass with the pure material quality of the metal wires, the glass and the roof.

Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) – Salvation trough Synthesis

Speaking with the contemporary critic Adolf BEHNE, (p.113), Finsterlin is an "unabashed romantic." "If we want to see the ultimate consequence of a functionalism [!] colored with a romantic and pantheistic tinge, then the best place to look is among Hermann Finsterlin’s designs, the most radical dissolution of the ‘house’-concept imaginable, approaching the forms of organic, growing nature." He quotes Finsterlin: "The formal type that is the last greatest genial invention of the terrestrial spirit – organic form – lies between the crystalline and the amorphous. My architecture also sprouts at this transition point. Inside the new house one will not only feel as though one is the occupant of a fabulous crystal druse, but like the internal resident of an organism, wandering from organ to organ, a symbiont of giving and receiving within a fossil of a gigantic mother’s body. A small fragment of the transposed set of boxes of world forms is to be found in the sequence of town, house, furniture, and vessel; growing out of one another like the gonads of an organism, these hollow creatures need no longer be displaced foreign bodies as they have been hitherto. […] "

Reading this, or looking at his renderings, there can be no doubt about Behne’s judgement. But he also admits that "Neither Van de Velde the romantic nor Finsterlin are backward-looking in their views – and the rationalist [Van de Velde] is emphatically a man of our times."

Finsterlin, for sure, was nonesuch – his Visions were pure fiction, related to a grotesque projection of nature which is as authentic as the alien in a trashy scifi-movie, and belong to the realm of the artificial nature. Just this idea of a synthesis between nature and, in this case, human fiction of functionalism, is what makes up the thrill of his Visions.

 
 

Frank Lloyd Wright: House Fallingwater (1935) – Reconciliation of House and Site     The Fallingwater House of Frank Lloyd Wright offers, as one example out of his huge oeuvre, the idea of a synthetic approach towards artificiality and authenticity. Obviously, the site is chosen for its singularity and authenticity, and there is a great effort being done not to adulterate this authenticity. Also, these special qualities of the site are the main theme for the building. The stair from the living room down to the waterfall, which lets the noise and glitter of the water in, may just be one example for the careful approach to the tactile qualities of the site and the way this sensibility is celebrated. On the other hand, the building itself changes the site as it celebrates it. It marks the special situation and contrasts the natural qualities found with geometric opponents, which hightens the viewer’s perception of both, and it represents human presence in and reaction to the nature. Thus we see a synthesis between Artificiality and Authenticity.

Figure 10 - Frank Lloyd Wright, House Fallingwater

Greg Lynn: ‘Multiplications and Inorganic Bodies’ – Authenticity through Generative Process

This approach to organic architecture, which I will not analyze in depth here, stands just for a different quality of approach to the parameters of artificiality and authenticity. Greg Lynn explores, as many others, structures of living nature under formal aspects like symmetry and form generating mechanisms, in order to transfer this mechanisms on design processes later. Thus he tries to generate artificial forms for artificial objects out of inherent organic principles. In contrast to the functionalists like Scharoun and Haering he does not rely on the functional or otherwise directly to the topic of design related mechanisms, because he is more interested in transforming and adulterating the objects of analysis and design than in getting some ‘truth’ out of them. So, authenticity is not his aim, but the resulting objects follow some inherent logic, too, which, after all makes them specific rather than generic – so: authentic. At the same time, they are fully artificial. This synthesis between artificial generation using inherent ‘forces’ is a different quality of approach.

Conclusion of Case Studies (Working Hypothesis)

Some of the projects have been analyzed rather superficially so far, or merely described. Especially the recent ones need the development of further tools of analysis. Others have shown interesting results.

We’ve seen a lot of different approaches to and relations of authenticity, artificiality and architecture so far, although the field of research has been quite narrow. Neither can we state that all revised architects have a clear preference towards authenticity versus artificiality in their work nor that none does. Both parameters seem to be rather independent but, anyway, cross influencing – which strengthens the Idea of a dialectic relation between them and their antonyms.

A deeper analysis might categorize by which means in detail a certain level of authenticity or artificiality is reached, instead of just deciding weather a project has some kind of authentic quality or not.

Without anticipating these results I dare the hypothesis that the success of any operational ‘usage’ of design parameters to obtain authenticity or artificiality depends on the successful management of some more layers. Among these might be ‘appropriateness’ (which is a question of context) and ‘eloquence of narration’ in the sense of complexity or simplicity of expression. As an example, the use of rusting metal can either be considered authentic or kitsch – depending on a whole bunch of factors that urge to be explored.
 
 

IV. Bibliography
 
 
 
 
 
 

Footnotes

1. * If we furthermore admit that nature also is a creation of our perception, even things like inauthentic, but not artificial nature become imaginable. (See Sabine KRAFT p. 23, quoting Simon SCHAMA, “Der Traum von der Wildnis. Natur als Imagination” Muenchen, 1996)
2. * Compare: Sabine KRAFT,  p. 23
3. * that means impersonal, or as a persona of the author, not the author itself
4. * Rousseau calls the individual’s experience of his existence the ‘sentiment of being’. (see Trilling, p.92)
5. * There is basically one book about Hugo Haering (by Heinrich Lauterbach and Juergen Joedicke, Stuttgart 1965) which documents and explains his whole oeuvre. All citations are out of this book, which has interestingly never been translated. Lately, in 1998, Peter Blundell-Jones, known for his publications on Scharoun, has published an English monograph about Haering – a really late honour…
6. * ‘Die gegliederte und aufgelockerte Stadt’, an Ideal, which was developed during the 30ies by Johannes GÖDERITZ, Roland RAINER, and Hubert HOFFMANN (see: Die gegliederte und aufgelockerte Stadt, Tübingen 1957. )
7. * besides some early designs for cinemas which look like Mendelssohn
8. * According to TRILLING (p. 87), the comic (or anti-) hero is authentic because he is closer to life. (See “The Heroic as opposed to the Authentic”)